A New Book on Octopus, Plus Seven Great Octopus Recipes

by Lauren Salkeld

on 10/30/13 at 09:01 AM

As someone who insists on ordering octopus whenever I see it on a restaurant menu, I'm completely perplexed by the notion that this cephalod "is not a naturally appealing dish for everyone." But according to Katherine Harmon Courage, author of the just published Octopus! not everyone shares my obsession.

Harmon's book is hardly limited to studying octopus as food. She dives into the animal's naturally camouflaging skin, its eight arms, its incredible intelligence (octopus are considered the smartest invertebrate), its hunting skills, and even how these mysterious animals mate. But obviously we're most interested in the parts about eating this delicious sea creature.

We spoke to Harmon about the book, how octopus is caught and tenderized, her favorite ways to eat octopus, and what to look for when shopping. Read on for our Q&A, plus seven of our favorite octopus recipes.

Epicurious: What made you want to write a book on octopus?

Katie Harmon Courage: They are some of the most amazing and delicious creatures on the planet. Humans have been catching and eating them for thousands of years, so they have become incredibly important to many cuisines, cultures, and economies. And in the past century, we have only just begun to understand more about their impressive intelligence and crazy biology, such as their ability to change color and texture to camouflage against their environment. I wrote a blog post for Scientific American a couple years ago about a new study suggesting that some octopuses actually use coconut shells as tools (for hiding in). And the researchers had filmed these animals attempting to wield these shells; it was adorable and hilarious and impressive at the same time. I knew I had to learn (and taste) more!

Epi: What's your favorite way to eat octopus?

KHC: When I was researching the book, I spent some time traveling around Europe. I made it a goal to eat octopus at least once a day every day, which might sound like octo-overload, but I never got tired of it. Some of the octopus I enjoyed the most was the simplest. In a small town in Greece called Gythio, a chef at a local restaurant prepared a boiled octopus in a light tomato sauce and incorporated it in a rice pilaf with super fresh ingredients. I ate it along the sea as the sun was setting. It was the best! For an even simpler meal, in northwest Spain, I had simple boiled octopus prepared in the traditional Galician style, called "polbo a feira." It is covered with olive oil, sea salt, and paprika and served with potatoes (which can be cooked in the octopus water). It was also incredible. As for an octopus dish I wasn't crazy about, in Malta I tried octopus pizza. Somehow it didn't seem right covered in so much gooey cheese.

Epi: In the context of octopus as food, what were some of the most surprising things you learned about octopus?

KHC: It was absolutely amazing to learn how octopus is caught. Unlike most fish that we eat (and even squid) octopus do not swim in schools. In fact, they live alone and spend most of their time hiding in dens, which makes them rather difficult to catch in large numbers. So in most places that have been catching octopuses for generations, each animal is captured individually. In Japan and Portugal, the traditional method is to use clay pots, that octopus will crawl into. In Spain, I went out with fishermen who set long lines of traps that looked liked lobster traps, and baited them with smelly fish. Most traps come up empty, but every several ones will have a single octopus in it (which weighed no more than five pounds). So it was incredible to see how much labor goes into catching each octopus. It has really made me respect the dish so much more.

Epi: Could you explain the tenderizing required before octopus can be cooked?

KHC: The tenderizing process is incredibly important for making octopus edible and delicious. Octopus arms are almost pure muscle, with fibers going in multiple directions, so they require quite a bit of work to make them tender, which is why octopus dishes are often "rubbery". In many places, people catching octopuses to eat themselves or sell locally, just hit the octopus on a rock near the beach a few dozen times. In Brooklyn, I visited an octopus processing and distribution plant that uses mechanized barrels with paddles that tenderize the octopus by tumbling it (much like clothes in a dryer) in salt water. For the intrepid home cook, Joy of Cooking, charmingly recommends to "pound them mercilessly on a solid surface." So, the important thing seems not to be how the tenderizing is done but that it is done.

Epi: Why is freezing actually a good thing when it comes to buying octopus?

KHG: Octopus is one of the few seafood dishes for which freezing is actually good for the texture. The freezing helps to break down the tough muscle tissues and make it tender. As one of the experts in Spain pointed out to me, the arrival of refrigeration technology was an especially large boon to the octopus industry, relieving home cooks and chefs alike of a lot of the manual brutality required to make the meat supple. And it of course made shipping it long distances much easier.

Epi: Based on your extensive octopus experience, can you offer any tips on shopping for and cooking octopus?

KHC: Most octopus for sale in the U.S. has been caught abroad and frozen before being shipped here. And because the freezing helps to tenderize it, that is not a bad thing. But as with any seafood, if it smells "fishy" pass it up for something fresher. Many of the most prolific octopus fisheries are not well regulated (which means fishing methods can harm the environment and fishermen can take too many young octopuses and damage the population numbers), so ecologists recommend avoiding octopus caught in Mauritania, Vietnam, the Philippines, or Morocco. Other places, such as Spain and Japan are much better about keeping the octopus populations healthy. On that note, it's best to buy medium- to large-sized octopuses; most octopuses that are sold for food are a single species: "common octopus." And if they are caught when they are really small, it means that they have not had a chance to mature and reproduce to keep the population going. Finally, it's also important to make sure you are actually buying octopus. It might sound crazy, but some places I traveled, including Puerto Rico, sold poor-quality frozen squid and tried to pass it off as octopus (labeling it as "pupo" rather than the correct Spanish word, "pulpo"). So if you see "cephalopod" (the name of animals that encompasses squid, cuttlefish, and octopus) on the package, be a little suspicious.